Cmi Hdd

[Micom 2000]

An old thread was just pulled up from 2003 and this caught my eye since I found a
CMI 6426-S when going thru my old FM HDs, presumably working when I stored it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mbbrutman
My my PC AT with the working CMI hard drive in it. I've never seen one of those, and I'm sure most people wouldn't catch the significance of it.

Few would. Then again, few CMI drives survived so in a supply vs. demand world, there isn't much of either to boost the value of that drive, is there? (Hypothetically, of course.)
(Eric)
.................................................. ..................................

What was the significance of this HD ? It wasn't spelled out in the thread.

The ST225 seems to fetch a good price. Why ?

I also have a couple of ST4096. Were these especially rare ?

All of these are Full-height drives.

Lawrence

Lawrence

[Erik]

IBM used Computer Memories Inc (CMI) to produce drives for the AT when it was new. These drives failed at such a high rate that it ended up being quite a scandal for IBM.

One company offered exchanges for new, working drives and then built an artificial reef off of Boca Raton with the piles of CMI drives turned in.

Working CMI drives are rare.

[mbbrutman]

CMI had actually been a good supplier of hard drives - just not at the rate that IBM needed them. When IBM started producing the AT CMI had to ramp up production fairly quickly. They were not successful, and the quality of the drives was horrendous. Hence the replacement with Seagate models.

Early CMI drives made before the increase in production might be just fine, but the ones made after the increase in production are extremely bad, hence the legend.

[Micom 2000]

OK I am going to be checking a bunch of FM drives. If it works is there a market other than EPay or our own less-populated VCMarket to offer it on ? Anyone interested ?

Lawrence

[Micom 2000]

Arrgh ! The XT I decided to use to test the FM HDs was a nice surpisingly fast APCO Turbo, a euro machine with a Phoenix Bios. It booted up fine with an install screen which passed too quickly to read it but was called "Lightning" I believe. Hopefully it is in the Bios because when I opened it up I saw it had an ST225 and the logical thing was to test the ST225 I had in my stash. After all these years I forgot about the "park" utility and after finding out the spare ST225 didn't work, on reinstalling it's formerly working 225, it wouldn't boot and while "DiskManager" identified the failed sectors I was unable to repair it. My "Spin-Rite"
rejected working with the copy I had as not original. So I now have 2 dead ST225s and a bare XT. I'll try using my copy of IBM 6.01 and scandisk but I have a bad feeling about it.

It was kind of dumb in the first place since I have several PCs and an XT which have a much a more expansive working area and I have a bunch of Meullers texts for IBM error rersources.

Oh well :^{{ That'll teach me for spending too much tine the last couple of deades in the world of point and click. Lazy is what lazy gets.

Any tips to avoid that happening with the PMI when I get my XT going ?

Lawrence

Lawrence

[billdeg]

Lawrence,
St-225's are hard to keep running, esp. if not spun regularly it could be that, I don't think you did anything that would damage a drive.

They appear in many of the very earliest 5MB-10MB harddrive-pc systems. In addition to the IBM PC and clones, they can for example be used in a the Commodore CBM 9060 5MB external hard drive with no jumper changes - just a re-format. These drives survived into the PC era and helped keep non PC systems competitive (for a while anyway). The ST-506 and ST-238 are also useful that way.

I have a box of nonfunctional ST-225's.

Perhaps < 1% of the orig production of these drives are still in a working system. That makes them valuable. Good company.

I always "heat" untested ST-225 drives before first use. I place drive (not entire system) in a dry and hot environment (100 degrees +) for 5-15 minutes prior to first use to loosen up the joints .

bd

[MikeS]

They do indeed die sometimes and I also doubt that you did anything other than to wake the sleeping gremlins. But don't throw it (them) out too quickly; there is hope sometimes with a little patience and the proper tools etc.

"Stiction" was not a big problem with ST225s AFAIR but worth checking: the drive *does* spin up on power up? Just random errors on the sort-of-working one or definite repeatable ones?

mike

[Micom 2000]

I've had to give up on the ST225s for now. The one that was working somewhat seems to be just about finished. When it first quit it would bring up the first line of the autoexec and then inform me it was unable to access. A return would give me the second line and the same message, but then it would just quit.

I used Spinrite with it and for a bit I thought I was home-free but just before the end of the workout it hickupped and Spinrite crashed and would no longer accept it. Disk manager tried, wrote a verified defect list and started the initialization but never finished. A scan or verify now seems to be finding all cylinders (at least the last 4) defective.
Oh well shxx happens.

I'll stick another drive in the XT, verify it works and stash it. I still have a bunch of HDs to test but I'll do it on my IBMs which are more spacious and also better documented in Mueller. I regret now abandoning the 20 or so XT clones when I moved out here, but I had already filled a 16ft U-haul and added an 8ft trailer for some of the overflo and that load included no appliances, couches, or box sping and mattresses. I was considered quite "mad" as it was.

Lawrence